Obama’s NSA reforms are going to tick off everyone

On Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to unveil changes to the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs. The announcement comes weeks after a post-Snowden advisory panel appointed by the president issued a whopping 300-plus pages of pro-transparency recommendations that, if taken up, would radically alter how the NSA does business. But according to earlyreports, Obama will only be implementing small reforms. He will punt the bigger decisions to Congress—with the hope of partially appeasing lawmakers, voters, privacy advocates, and the national security community. From the looks of it, pretty much everyone is going to be mad at him.

Right now, the NSA collects Americans’ phone metadata in bulk. (Metadata, which includes call dates and phone numbers, is revealing, but it doesn’t include the contents of the actual conversations.) For privacy advocates, ceasing the practice is a top priority. “Ending bulk collection is essential to effective reform,” says Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology​Center. “I can’t imagine anyone who’s concerned about these programs is going to be satisfied by a bunch of cosmetic tweaks that leave bulk collection in place,” adds Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. The conservative activist group FreedomWorks will also be mad if Obama doesn’t repeal bulk surveillance. “The NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance must be stopped to safeguard our civil liberties,” the group writes. Julie Borowski, policy analyst for FreedomWorks, said in a press call on Thursday that the group supports the USA Freedom Act, which would end bulk collection of phone data.

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